MNR has just upgraded the fire hazard to
extreme. Be safe. Be prepared for a fire ban. See story below.

Posted 1:45 p.m.

JUNE 22, 2003

Fire ban coming?

With no rain in the forecast and other areas
in northern Ontario under open-fire ban, Temagami could be next.

The area is currently under a High fire-hazard
warning. The forecast shows hot, dry, sunny days for most of the week.
Parts of the Kirkland Lake area to the
north and all northwestern Ontario are under fire ban due to the extreme
fire hazard there.

Be safe and be prepared for an open-fire ban
(campfires not permitted). Under a ban, backcountry travel is still
permitted but cooking can only be done with a stove.

Updated 1:30 p.m.

JUNE 21, 2003

Government targets more wilderness for logging;
park's remoteness at stake

The Ministry of Natural Resources has quietly
slipped a new logging area into the middle of the timber-planning process, and
the target for logging: roadless wilderness; rare virgin forest,
old-growth jack pine.

This forest lies next to Solace Park, a remote
wilderness currently inaccessible by road. Roads would be built into the area for the
operation, which would be clear-cutting.

As demonstrated in a recent report by the
Wildlands League, once a logging road is built, it may never be
effectively closed, even
when guaranteed in public land-use and timber plans.

If approved, the allocation — known as block 60 — will be logged sometime
in the next five years.

Ontario's Minister of Environment is about to
sign away years of carefully crafted environmental protection for
Ontario's forests in favour of a logging-first policy, says Wildlands
League.

Clear-cut limits will be removed and the size
of a clear-cut
could be as large as a small city. The new law will surrender old-growth forest and roadless wilderness. Roads will proliferate in a way
we never could have imagined.

The priority will be timber-first instead of
sustainability. The amount of forest logged will be determined by industry
needs, not by what a forest can sustain.

Ontario's public forests cover an area larger than the state of California.

The existing law was created after four years
of public hearings and 70,000 pages of transcripts. The public will be given less input in
future logging
plans and there will be no requirement for future reviews of policy.

A reading of a report on logging-road closures
leads to one glaring conclusion: MNR has violated the public trust.

The report from the Wildlands League revealed
that the infamous Barmac gate on the Red Squirrel Road had enough room
under it to drive an ATV through.

The Hangstone gate, which protected the Cross
Lake area, was ineffective because MNR allowed an alternative access that
detoured around the gate. MNR justified the detour because it pre-existed
the gate.

The report pointed out that MNR could not
identify where all the road closures were or even how many there were.
Some new ones were discovered by the report team while doing field
inspections.

Additional closures on the west side of Lake
Temagami were not known to MNR or the report's authors and not included in
the report.

Without this knowledge there can be no
enforcement. Without enforcement there are no road closures (see
yesterday's story).

A common defense used by MNR to justify its
failure to perform its duty has been the lack of funding and manpower
since cutbacks began under the Harris government in 1996. However, the
report goes back through 14 years of MNR records, noting failures during
an era of fat budgets.

Public motorized access into the area has been
a long-standing and bitter controversy, a problem created by logging road
expansion. MNR justified continued logging on the basis that access could
be controlled by closing roads.

This blatant failure to do so makes a mockery
of MNR's public commitments and undermines the credibility of logging.

The report was derived from an audit of MNR
enforcement records and independent field inspections on 21 gates and
other controls. Half of all inspections, independent and MNR, revealed
breaches of the closures.

The gate on the Liskeard Lumber Road that
protected the Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Wilderness Park was found open on
every inspection. Even if the gate was locked, "there is enough room to
drive a truck around it on a new road," said report author Chris Henschel.

"The biggest problem is planning," he said.
"You have to place a road where it can be the most effective at
restricting access. Put a gate on a bridge over a major river and remove
the bridge when the road is closed."

"The prognosis is not good," said Henschel.
"Imagine someone willing to go to any length to defeat the restriction."